The announcement from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that it will allow investors to buy and sell “future” contracts in Bitcoins – an agreement to buy the crypto-currency, for example, in three months time at a certain price – was seen as a watershed moment for Bitcoin.

Cambridge Global Payments director of global product and market strategy Karl Schamotta said that move was behind the latest rally: “The perception in households around the world that the CME and the CBOE are providing legitimacy to bitcoin is really what is driving the massive rally here.”

But Leonhard Weese, president of the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong, said the rise in Bitcoin’s value was “mostly motivated by fear of missing out and greed”.

Bitcoins are created through a complex computer process known as mining, and then monitored by a network of computers across the world.

A steady stream of about 3,600 new bitcoins are created a day – with about 16.5 million now in circulation from a maximum limit of 21 million.